Lou Holtz is a hard man. He tore a Tennessee fan a new asshole when his hat was stolen in Knoxville once. He frequently got into the facemasks of linemen three times his size. And once, when cornered in a bar in Bolivia, he killed Che Guevara with half a beer bottle and a two shoelaces knotted together. Do. Not. Fuck with Lou Holtz.

His name itself means “hard wood.” Listen to Lou set off the gigglebox in Rece Davis with a single sentence. (Massive HT: Adam from the fine blog Here Come The Pretzels.)

Awful Announcing has another outstanding Holtzism from last night, but we think Holtz turned the corner from periodically annoying teleprechaummentator to broadcasting genius when they started letting him do whatever the hell he wanted to…and after a lifetime of coaching and showing up on time and scheduling, Lou’s finally matured into full-blown kookdom. As commenter Oops Pow Surprise puts it:

How did Lou Holtz go from “should not be on television” to “should be on every single channel of television simultaneously” this quickly? After the last three weeks of insanity, I want to put him on top of a St. Bernard and give him his own 5-hour talk show on Animal Planet.

We’d buy the dog ourselves, OPS. Especially for a man who says this on the air:

“That’s like comparing Joan Collins to Linda Evans.”- Lou Holtz
“Now for a more modern reference, like Eva Longoria to Teri Hatcher.”- Rece Davis
“I don’t know who that is.”- Lou Holtz

Lou Holtz, we crave our next inspirational speech. You can work magic even without ripping a newspaper in half and making it whole again.